


reflect

by snowdarkred



Series: dig your teeth in and tear until you taste (peter/stiles oneshots) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Magic Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(previously posted to tumblr)</p><p>When he dreams, he can sometimes still hear his mother’s voice, explaining it to him: <i>Reflections are the price we pay for what we are.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	reflect

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for mentions of parental death
> 
> So. This fic. Is definitely a thing that happened.

Stiles has always been able to see them. _Reflections_ , his mother called it, whispering to him as she lay dying in the hospital bed. _Echos._ He saw the shadow of her fading life, flickering in the shiny equipment lined up beside her bed, standing tall like tombstones. Death followed her halting footsteps through the halls, until she was too weak for footsteps, until she was too weak for living. 

(He hates it.

He hates seeing how far into grief his father is falling, hates seeing the shadow of sorrow consume him like a living thing. It hangs over their house, suffocating, and Stiles takes refuge at Scott’s because anything is better than waking in the middle of the night, gasping for breath as your home presses down on your chest. 

He hates it, but it keeps him alive. He can see the reflection of bad intentions, the dark tentacles of evil that wrap around Matt’s face, reflected in the chemistry beakers. Jackson’s reflection hisses when someone passes to close. Lydia has wolfsbane woven through her hair and a dark shadow encircling her neck. 

Stiles looks Scott in the eyes and sees a wolf. 

But it’s the mirrors that kill him, the polished glass and smooth clean metal. Stiles flinches from his own reflection because—)

He quickly learns how to use this — curse, gift, burden. This ability as a way to survive. He learns to read ill intentions in a glimmer and murder in the shine of a reflection’s bloody knife. 

(Peter wears his personality like a mask, and he welds it like a weapon. Stiles envies him, on a level he doesn’t want to contemplate. Peter’s reflection is always Peter, because Peter is never anything but Peter. He is malevolent, he is sly, and he is himself in all things.)

When he dreams, he can sometimes still hear his mother’s voice, explaining it to him: _Reflections are the price we pay for what we are._

And in his child’s voice, he asks, _What are we?_

_A balance_ , his mother sighs, as death steals her breath away.

(Stiles is—) 

Remorse has its own shade. Grief has its shadow. There are colors that tint a reflection, events that twist everything like crushed metal, blows that fleck the surface like rust.

He covers his mirrors like he’s grieving still, draping them in shirts and blankets. His father gives him looks, but Stiles turns his head so that he won’t risk seeing the words reflected in the sheriff’s shiny badge.

(In his dreams, Peter uncovers all the mirrors, wraps his claws around Stiles’s face, tilts his head like a doll’s, makes him look into his own eyes and asks, “What do you see?”

And in the mirror Stiles is—)

It used to be a game he and Scott would play, when they still played games. They’d sit side by side and Scott would lean close, close enough that his breath moved the hair about Stiles’s ear. _What do you see?_ he’d ask, and Stiles would answer: the neighbor’s disintegrating relationship with his wife in the glint of his wedding ring, the store clerk’s baby nestled between her arms as she worked to wring their purchases, the burn of fire the criminal’s eyes, and also his death, burned into an oil drum like soot. 

(Peter is himself, always; he wears his personality like a mask. And when Stiles looks at his reflection he sees—)


End file.
